me, some of whom talked one, and some the other; but I talked both; yet one not so readily as the other; and but beginningly as it were; still this other was the one which was gradually displacing the former. The men who—as it sometimes dreamily seems to me at times—often climbed the three strange treelike things, they talked—I needs must think—if indeed I have any real thought about so bodiless a phantom as this is—they talked the language which I speak of as at this time gradually waning in me. It was a bonny tongue; oh, seems to me so sparkling-gay and lightsome; just the tongue for a child like me, if the child had not been so sad always. It was pure children's language, Pierre; so twittering—such a chirp.
'In thy own mind, thou must now perceive, that most of these dim remembrances in me, hint vaguely of a ship at sea. But all is dim and vague to me. Scarce know I at any time whether I tell you real things, or the unrealest dreams. Always in me, the solidest things melt into dreams, and dreams into solidities. Never have I wholly recovered from the effects of my strange early life. This it is, that even now—this moment—surrounds thy visible form, my brother, with a mysterious mistiness; so that a second face, and a third face, and a fourth face peep at me from within thy own. Now dim, and more dim, grows in me all the memory of how thou and I did come to meet. I go groping again amid all sorts of shapes, which part to me; so that I seem to advance through the shapes; and yet the shapes have eyes that look at me. I turn round, and they look at me; I step forward, and they look at me.—Let me be silent now; do not speak to me.'
IV
Filled with nameless wonderings at this strange being, Pierre sat mute, intensely regarding her half-averted
